Today we are officially releasing our new Reseller platform, the end-to-end way to sell hosting, domains, templates, support and services through your own white-label portal, on your own domain.
Exclusively available for WPMU DEV Agency members, we’ve built this platform from the ground up to make selling-sites-while-you-sleep a reality.
Read on to see how you can use Reseller to create your own Squarespace, GoDaddy, or to just automate your web development business.
Manual no more
Our members have always resold WPMU DEV plugins, hosting and services and we’ve always done whatever we can to make that happen by making it easy to white-label everything we do.
But that’s always been a manual process, your customers have had to contact you, you’ve set stuff up and emailed them back, and so on.
Well, that ends today, because with Reseller you can offer your site visitors a hosting plan, a choice of templates and any services you care to add on, and they can purchase it and create a subscription, without you having to lift a finger.
They’ll be able to manage their site and their subscription using your professional custom portal, get support, and purchase other services as you define them.
And shortly, you’ll be able to package domains with that too.
Reseller tools
To get started, just visit the new Reseller icon in The Hub and follow the instructions, as part of this you’ll set up:
White-label billing, powered by Stripe
Easily manage your clients, invoices, and recurring revenue from one place.
Our client billing platform has already processed over $5 million in subscriptions and invoices for our members, and it powers Reseller, allowing you to easily let your customers set up subscription packages and make one-off payments.
Even better, we charge 0% commission, so you get to keep the entire fee.
White-label client portal, at your own domain
Create a branded portal where clients can check out, log in, and manage their sites.
The Hub Client is already used by thousands of WPMU DEV members to provide a professional portal for their clients, and now you can also use it to create elegant product and pricing tables that allow your users to check out directly to their new site.
And you can control exactly what they see there.
Hosting and template packages
Add your products, create bundled plans, and set your pricing/subscription terms.
It’s easy with Reseller to create as many packages as you like, combining templates (use ours or create your own) and whatever hosting packages you choose. Then, simply add prices and advertise them on your site.
We’ll only ever charge you, at our normal rates, for the hosting your customers buy.
Coming soon…
Reseller is ready to go now. In fact, it’s already being used successfully by a number of members, but there are some core integrations coming soon that we think you’ll enjoy.
Domain automation
Full domain reseller automation is on the way next!
Allow your customers to search for and purchase a domain with their package, this will automatically map the domain to their site and set up a subscription for them too. Domain transfers will also work just fine.
In the interim, you can encourage customers to bring their own domains or let them know you’ll arrange that shortly (and you can use the billing platform for that).
White-label support
Brand our highly-rated 24/7 expert support as your own!
Are you concerned about not being able to support your clients 24/7? We know exactly how you feel and that’s why we’re going to offer white-label support to help you run your round-the-clock business, with a platform that integrates your support with ours.
Of course, you can already provide your own integrated support right now as part of The Hub Client.
Let us know how you go
We’re really looking forward to seeing how you use Reseller and developing the platform to help you succeed, so please let us know through the feedback tab how you go, and what we can do to help you succeed.
And, of course, we’re interested in your impressions here too 🙂 So feel free to leave a comment below!
WPMU DEV’s free all-new and improved Broken Link Checker plugin saves you the time and tedious hassle of handling crucial link management tasks across all your WordPress sites.
“I have been looking to find an easier way to check for broken links. Thank you for making this tool so accessible.” Dena, WPMU DEV Member
Broken links are a negative indicator of site health and can have a major impact on your PageRank and your reputation. Staying on top of your site links is an essential and crucial aspect of good WordPress site management.
But… manually checking your content for broken links is time-consuming and tedious excruciating, especially if you manage multiple WordPress sites.
“This is potentially going to save a ton of time! Before now I’ve always done a manual check on all sites I create.” TNT Systems, WPMU DEV Member
This article shows you how to use our powerful link checking tool on unlimited WordPress sites – completely re-engineered with a top user-requested feature and a new API that works 20x faster, to deliver better and more accurate results, prevent negative SEO performance issues, and improve user experience.
We also include a comprehensive guide covering all you need to know about why link management is important and how to effectively manage broken links on all of your sites.
Let’s jump right in and take a look at the only tool you’ll ever need to check and repair broken links on unlimited WordPress sites.
WordPress Broken Link Checker (BLC) Plugin
Broken Link Checker is now even better and faster at finding broken links on WordPress sites.
WPMU DEV acquired Broken Link Checker many years back from ManageWP, and since then have implemented many tweaks and fixes to improve its capabilities, growing its popularity to 700K downloads and its user satisfaction to 4/5 stars.
[NB: Special shoutout to Patrick Walker, Team Lead at WP Engine’s Customer Experience Operations Team for his hard work in collaboration with our engineers to get our plugin removed from WP Engine’s and Flywheel’s block list.]
While we plan to continue maintaining and improving the old plugin version for the thousands of users who are still currently using it, starting from versions 2.0 and onward, we’ve also introduced a new cloud-based link checking plugin for WordPress.
Note: We’ll focus the rest of this article on our Cloud Link Checker. For more information on using the old (Local) BLC plugin, visit the plugin download page on WordPress.org.
Why Two Different Link Checking Engines?
The old Broken Link Checker plugin (we now call this version Local Link Checker) is a great tool currently used and loved by thousands of WordPress users to keep their URLs healthy.
If you love it, feel free to keep using it. Keep in mind, however, that it depends on your site’s resources to run scans, which can be affected by your hosting plan’s available resources, and, depending on what plugins are installed on your site, could cause conflicts or WP/PHP errors.
Our latest innovation — a cloud-based plugin — takes things to a whole new level and opens the door to an entirely new scope of possibilities that we couldn’t achieve before by integrating the best of the Local BLC plugin with cloud capabilities directly into The Hub (our all-in-one WordPress platform), all at no additional cost to users.
For example, some of the benefits of the new cloud-based BLC include:
Scalability: Cloud Link Checker runs on WPMU DEV’s engines not the individual site where the plugin is installed, so you can run broken link scans on sites of any size and server type.
Blazing Fast Scans: Being cloud-based means any dependencies on the performance of your server are eliminated, giving your scans a massive speed increase.
No Risk of Blocklisting: Pinging external sites repeatedly from your website raises suspicious flags with internet service providers and puts your site at risk of being blocklisted. Cloud BLC doesn’t use your site’s IP address, so there’s no risk of your site(s) being blocklisted.
Faster Updates and Instant Improvements: No more waiting for plugin version releases or worrying whether you site’s resources can handle the changes. We test, fix, and improve everything on the cloud and your site benefits instantly as soon as we deploy the changes and improvements to our engine..
Eliminate WordPress and PHP Errors: Our cloud-based link checker doesn’t run on your site’s resources, so you won’t experience site resource errors using the plugin.
Crawl Everything: Cloud Link Checker follows the same logic as search engine crawlers, so no URLs are missed on all standard pages and posts, menus, category pages, etc. Even better, use scheduled reports to discover broken links before the search engines see them.
WPMU DEV’s Cloud-based Link Checker provides better performance and faster speed.
Cloud BLC scans your site from top to bottom, monitoring external and internal links in your posts, pages, comments, blogroll – even custom fields.
It detects links that don’t work, as well as missing images and redirects. It will then notify you via the Broken Link Checker section of the Hub, or you can view a summary of the results in the plugin dashboard of your WordPress site.
“Love this new tool, especially since it runs off-site and doesn’t hog server resources.” Levi, WPMU DEV Member
Set Up
Whether you’re an existing Broken Link Checker plugin user or new to the tool, setup is a breeze.
You can set up the plugin from the WordPress dashboard plugin and from WPMU DEV’s Hub.
Let’s look at both methods.
From the WordPress Dashboard
Cloud Link Checker activation in the WordPress dashboard.
Install and activate the plugin.
Go to the Link Checker menu and select Cloud.
If you’re logged into WPMU DEV, click ‘Enable Cloud Engine’ (otherwise, the button will say ‘Connect to WPMU DEV’), and you’ll be taken through The Free Hub onboarding process, as well as the broken links checking tool component. This will lead you directly to the BLC service tab in The Free Hub.
From here, run a new scan. You’ll get a notification once the scan completes, so feel free to look around The Free Hub while you wait.
Once you receive notification that the scan is complete, you can view the results in the Broken Link Checker section of The Free Hub.
From The Hub
Broken Link Checker activation in The Hub.
After logging into The Hub, you’ll see Broken Link Checker listed as a new service in the menu (top & sidebar).
Activate this to install the plugin on the site.
Run a scan to see your results.
However you choose to install the Cloud Link Checker, the WordPress dashboard will display the Summary Report, while The Hub will have the Full Report – including the list of broken and dead links.
Scan results in the WordPress dashboard.
Click View Full Report to see the full scan report in The Hub.
The Hub displays a detailed list of your broken URLs after scanning.
Aside from locating your broken links, missing images, and redirects, the plugin has additional functions that let you schedule scans, send reports by email, search (with built-in filters), and export your lists for download.
Edit/Unlink Broken Links
Our members spoke…and we listened!
One of the most requested features for this tool was the ability to edit and unlink broken links.
We’re thrilled to announce that in addition to ignoring and reporting links as not broken, you can now also easily edit and unlink broken links from The Hub.
Simply click on the vertical ellipsis (3 dots) to the right of any link listed in the Hub’s scan report and select one of the available options.
Edit, Unlink, Ignore, or Report links as Not Broken.
Select Edit Link to point the link to a new URL, Unlink to remove the link and change it to plain text, or select one of the other options to ignore the link or to report false positives (note: we use Not Broken reports to improve BLC’s engine).
Note: New scans are temporarily disabled while the system is performing editing or unlinking operations. You can run a new scan after these processes have completed.
Also, to keep reports manageable, if the scan detects multiple instances of the same broken link URL, the report only displays the first 10 instances and notifies you how many other instances there are.
Scan reports are kept manageable by displaying only the first 10 URLs for the same broken link.
You can choose to edit or unlink only the first 10 visible links, or perform the operation on all instances of that same link.
Edit (or unlink) only the first 10 links or all links.
Note that the tool does not scan hardcoded links written in php files (eg template files, shortcodes, etc.).
Run Manual Scans
You can run a manual scan any time, in both the WordPress dashboard and The Hub. Just hit the blue Run Scan button. This can be helpful if you’ve done some clean up, and want to refresh your view of the list.
Schedule Scans & Send Reports by Email
Scheduling scans is done from the Broken Link Checker plugin section in the WordPress dashboard.
Schedule new scans for broken link checks in your WordPress dashboard.
At least one recipient must be added to schedule reports, so that it can be sent to a party via email.
Click on the cog icon to see the menu options for scanning.
From the Schedule Scan section, click Configure.
Check that you are on the Schedule Date tab from the top menu.
Choose the Frequency, from Daily, Weekly, Monthly.
Select desired time, day, or date from the dropdown options; then click Save.
The plugin provides many options for scheduling scans.
Now we will add recipients (at least one), so the report has a destination to be sent to:
Click on the Add Recipients tab.
You can either Add Users, from the list of those you’ve already added to the site, or Add By Email, for anyone at all. Remember to Save Changes.
Adding recipients to get scan reports via email is fast and easy.
You can deactivate the scheduled scan or change the sending schedule, as well as who it goes to, at any time.
Search
To easily locate your URLs, search results can be filtered from within The Hub.
From the summary screen, you can use the dropdowns to filter by Status or Domain.
Use the built-in filters to locate items more easily in your Broken URL list.
Export Lists
You can export your broken URL lists anytime in CSV format.
To do this, simply click the Export as CSV button from the summary screen in The Hub.
And … that’s it! You’re now a BLC pro.
Keep your site’s links healthy with the best free broken link checker tool for WordPress.
“I love this! Offsetting the resources to the cloud will help so many sites!” PTaubman, WPMU DEV Member
“But I’m happy with Local BLC and I don’t run multiple sites…”
If you want to keep using the older plugin, you don’t have to switch to Cloud Link Checker. Local BLC will keep working just fine and you can easily switch to the cloud version at any time inside your WordPress admin.
You can switch between cloud and local link checker inside the WordPress admin.
Just keep in mind that you can only activate one engine at a time, so if the Cloud engine is running, Local Link Checker will be inactive and vice-versa.
Switch link checker engines inside your WordPress dashboard.
Note: if you run a multisite installation, BLC cloud version will only be available on the main site when network-activated. Due to the complexity of scanning multisite, subsites will continue to use the BLC Local version.
Cloud Link Checker – Perfect For Agencies
Being able to manage all of your sites from one place (The Hub) and send clients white labeled reports makes Cloud Link Checker the perfect solution for agencies, freelancers, and anyone running multiple WordPress sites.
Clients will love you even more when they see you’ve taken care of their broken links.
You can also use the tool with a customized report as a way to generate new clients for your agency and upsell WordPress maintenance services to existing clients.
Use BLC with whitelabel reports to generate new clients and upsell maintenance services.
Compare our plugin with other broken link checking tools and you will quickly see why WPMU DEV’s cloud-based link checker is a no-brainer.
For example, here’s one of our competitors’ offering:
Free version limitations:
Only one website allowed.
Only 200 links checked per month.
Only internal links are checked.
Links are checked once every 3 days.
Cost: $30/month (credit card required to sign up).
Whereas, with WPMU DEV’s Cloud Link Checker…
No limitations:
Unlimited number of websites.
Unlimited number of links.
Internal and External links are checked (Local and Cloud versions).
Set your own schedule (Local and Cloud versions).
Manually check all your sites anytime.
Cost: Free (priority support included for members only).
No credit card required to sign up.
To get the full picture of what our broken links checker can do, see the plugin documentation.
Now that we’ve shared the good news with you about a powerful WordPress troubleshooting tool every web developer (and user) should have in their site management toolbox, let’s take a closer look at the harm broken links can cause if left unchecked and why you need a tool like Broken Link Checker.
How Broken Links Affect SEO
High-quality, relevant, and authoritative links are crucial to a website’s SEO and reputation. Broken links can have several negative impacts on search engine optimization, including:
1. Crawling and Indexing Issues: Search engine crawlers follow links to discover and index web pages. In fact, Google cites good working links as a best practice. When a crawler encounters a broken link, it cannot access the linked page and may struggle to navigate through your website effectively. This can prevent certain pages from being indexed, making them invisible to search engines and reducing their chances of appearing in search results.
2. Increased Bounce Rates: Bounce rate measure how long users spend time on a particular web page before “bouncing” to another one. Visitors who stumble upon broken links may abandon a site altogether. When visitors repeatedly choose to leave a web page almost immediately after landing on it, this leads to a high bounce rate, which sends a “low-quality” signal to search engines about the site.
3. Decreased Search Engine Rankings: Search engines aim to deliver the best user experience by providing relevant and high-quality search results. Websites with broken links may be considered less reliable and valuable by search engines, leading to lower rankings in search results. This can result in reduced organic traffic and visibility for your website.
4. Impact on Internal Link Structure: Broken links disrupt the internal link structure of your website. Internal linking helps search engines understand the relationships between different pages and establishes a hierarchy of importance. When broken links exist within this structure, it can confuse search engines and weaken the overall SEO structure of your website.
5. Lost Backlink Opportunities: Backlinks are an important factor in SEO, as they indicate the authority and relevance of your website. If other websites link to broken pages on your site, it can negatively impact your backlink profile. Broken links may deter other webmasters from linking to your site, reducing your chances of acquiring valuable backlinks.
To mitigate the negative impact of broken links on SEO, it is crucial to regularly monitor and fix them. Conducting regular website audits, using tools to identify broken links like BLC, and implementing redirects or updating links can help improve user experience, maintain search engine rankings, and enhance the overall SEO performance of your website.
Broken Links Can Also Harm Your Business
In addition to impacting your site’s SEO, broken links can also cause serious damage to your business and its reputation. This includes:
1. Poor User Experience: Studies show that 89% of consumers will shop with a competitor after having a poor user experience on a site. Broken links create a negative user experience by leading visitors to dead-end pages or error messages. Users expect links to provide relevant information or resources, and encountering broken links can be frustrating. This can decrease user engagement, increase bounce rates, and ultimately harm your website’s reputation.
2. Negative Impact on Revenue: Broken links can sometimes cause roadblocks in your sales conversion process. Investing money and time into marketing efforts to get potential customers to your site then losing sales because they cannot reach conversion pages means wasted time and lost revenue.
3. Security Vulnerabilities: Broken links can also lead to malicious attacks on your site, phishing scams, and broken links hijacking (see below)
What is Broken Links Hijacking (BLH)?
Broken Links Hijacking (BLH) refers to the practice of exploiting expired, unlinked, or inactive external links found within a webpage.
It involves malicious actors taking advantage of resources or third-party services that are no longer available or valid, such as due to expired domains. These attackers can seize control of these links to carry out various harmful activities, including defacement through acquiring expired domains, impersonation, or even cross-site scripting.
Attack Scenario and Security Risks
Let’s imagine a scenario where a business shuts down or forgets to create a social media page but still has the link to that page on its website. In this case, an attacker can simply create an account using the same name and then proceed to post offensive content or launch phishing attacks while pretending to be the business.
Illustrative Scenario
To illustrate this further, let’s consider a website called thewebsite.com that mentions a LinkedIn page URL but hasn’t actually created the page yet. As a result, when users try to visit the LinkedIn page using the URL (e.g., https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-website/), they encounter a “404 page not found” error.
Exploiting this situation, an attacker creates a fake LinkedIn page and customizes the URL to resemble “the-website.” Consequently, when a regular user accesses the company’s LinkedIn page through the URL, they unknowingly get redirected to the attacker’s controlled LinkedIn page.
What Causes Broken Links?
There are several factors that can lead to broken links. Some of the most common causes include:
1. Typo: Mistakes made when writing the link can result in broken links. This could be a simple error in typing or copy-pasting the URL incorrectly.
2. Deleted Pages: When a page is deleted from a website, any links pointing to that page will become broken. This can happen when content is removed or when a website undergoes restructuring.
3. Renamed Pages: If URLs are changed or pages are renamed without implementing proper redirects, the old links pointing to those pages will no longer work and lead to broken links.
4. Domain Name Change: When a website changes its domain name, any links pointing to the old domain will become broken unless appropriate redirects are in place.
Best Practices to Fix Broken Links
To fix broken links, it is important to follow these best practices:
1. Check Links with a Broken Link Checker (BLC): Use a reliable tool to identify broken links on your website. This will provide you with a list of broken links that need to be addressed.
2. Prioritize High Authority Pages: Start by addressing broken links on pages with high authority or those that receive significant traffic. Fixing these links will have a greater impact on your website’s overall performance.
3. Redirect to Relevant URLs: If a page has been deleted or its URL has changed, set up proper redirects (such as 301 redirects) to automatically send visitors to the relevant new URL. This ensures a seamless user experience and avoids 404 error pages.
Steps to Avoid and Fix 404 Pages
To prevent and resolve 404 pages (page not found errors), consider the following steps:
1. Preserve and Update Content: Instead of deleting pages outright, consider updating or refreshing the content. This helps avoid unnecessary 404 pages caused by removing content that other pages have linked to.
2. Implement 301 or 302 Redirects: If a page’s content still exists but its location or URL structure has changed, use 301 or 302 redirects to redirect visitors to the new page. This ensures they can still access the desired content without encountering a 404 error.
3. Reach Out to Webmasters for Updated Links: If a 404 error occurs due to an external website incorrectly linking to your content, you can try contacting the website’s author or web administrator. Requesting an update to the erroneous link can help resolve the issue, or alternatively, suggest changing the link altogether.
Fixing Broken Links: Manual vs Automated Methods
Fixing broken links has long been considered an essential practice among SEO practitioners. Broken links should be fixed quickly.
Google understands that broken links are a natural happening. However, SEOs know that taking time to correct these issues can significantly impact the site’s performance in search engines.
For these reasons and more, it’s clearly important to keep tabs on all of your site links. A small site with minimal content can easily handle checking for broken links manually. However, the more content your site has, the more difficult it becomes to conduct manual scans of your links.
Fixing broken links manually on a website and using automated methods each have their own benefits:
Benefits of Using Manual Methods to Fix Broken Links
1. Accuracy: When fixing broken links manually, you have full control and can ensure that each link is checked and corrected accurately. This allows for a more precise and tailored approach to resolving broken links.
2. Customization: Manual fixing allows you to review each broken link individually and determine the best course of action. You can update the URL, remove the link, or find alternative resources as needed.
3. Quality control: By manually fixing broken links, you can ensure that the replacement URLs are relevant, trustworthy, and provide value to your users. It allows for a more thorough evaluation of the content being linked to.
4. User experience: Manually fixing broken links allows you to consider the user experience in the process. You can choose appropriate anchor text, update navigation menus, and ensure a seamless browsing experience for your visitors.
5. Content review: While fixing broken links manually, you can review the content surrounding the broken links. This presents an opportunity to update outdated information, improve the overall quality of the content, and enhance the SEO performance of the page.
Benefits of Using Automated Methods to Fix Broken Links
1. Time-saving: Automated tools can scan your website and identify broken links quickly, saving you time and effort compared to manually checking each link individually.
2. Efficiency: With automated methods, you can fix broken links in bulk rather than addressing them one by one. This can be especially useful for large websites with a high volume of broken links.
3. Scalability: Automated tools can handle the detection and fixing of broken links on websites of any size. They can efficiently process a large number of links, ensuring comprehensive coverage.
4. Regular monitoring: Automated methods allow for regular and scheduled scans of your website, ensuring that new broken links are promptly identified and addressed.
5. Consistency: Using automated tools ensures a consistent approach to fixing broken links across your entire website. This helps maintain a unified user experience and prevents oversight of any broken links.
The choice between using manual and automated methods depends on your specific needs, resources, and preferences. The good news is, all of the risks associated with bad links are easily avoided if you make sure they are kept in proper working order.
Even better, is using a quality, automated dead link checker tool like Broken Link Checker removes the tedious and time consuming task of manually tracking and manging your broken links.
Take Link Maintenance to the Next Level with WPMU DEV’s BLC
Over 700,000 WordPress users depend on Broken Link Checker to keep their sites free of errors and performance issues caused by outdated and non-working URLs.
Our new cloud-based plugin version offers even more incredible value — enhanced speeds, no PHP/DB errors, ability to schedule scans and send email reports (including white labeled), plus the ease of managing unlimited sites from one central Hub – all while still (and always) remaining free.
Don’t let your site’s SEO and user experience take an unnecessary hit. Especially when a practical solution is directly within your reach.
Connect, scan, schedule, and fix broken links quickly and easily and keep your sites running optimally with the new Cloud-based Link Checker. Get it for free or as a WPMU DEV member.
WPMU DEV’s free all-new and improved Broken Link Checker plugin saves you the time and tedious hassle of handling crucial link management tasks across all your WordPress sites.
“I have been looking to find an easier way to check for broken links. Thank you for making this tool so accessible.” Dena, WPMU DEV Member
Broken links are a negative indicator of site health and can have a major impact on your PageRank and your reputation. Staying on top of your site links is an essential and crucial aspect of good WordPress site management.
But… manually checking your content for broken links is time-consuming and tedious excruciating, especially if you manage multiple WordPress sites.
“This is potentially going to save a ton of time! Before now I’ve always done a manual check on all sites I create.” TNT Systems, WPMU DEV Member
This article shows you how to use our powerful link checking tool on unlimited WordPress sites – completely re-engineered with a top user-requested feature and a new API that works 20x faster, to deliver better and more accurate results, prevent negative SEO performance issues, and improve user experience.
We also include a comprehensive guide covering all you need to know about why link management is important and how to effectively manage broken links on all of your sites.
Let’s jump right in and take a look at the only tool you’ll ever need to check and repair broken links on unlimited WordPress sites.
WordPress Broken Link Checker (BLC) Plugin
Broken Link Checker is now even better and faster at finding broken links on WordPress sites.
WPMU DEV acquired Broken Link Checker many years back from ManageWP, and since then have implemented many tweaks and fixes to improve its capabilities, growing its popularity to 700K downloads and its user satisfaction to 4/5 stars.
[NB: Special shoutouts to Patrick Walker, Team Lead at WP Engine’s Customer Experience Operations Team for his hard work in collaboration with our engineers to get our plugin removed from WP Engine’s and Flywheel’s block list and to Kinsta for providing suggestions that led to the development of our new cloud-based tool.]
While we plan to continue maintaining and improving the old plugin version for the thousands of users who are still currently using it, starting from versions 2.0 and onward, we’ve also introduced a new cloud-based link checking plugin for WordPress.
Note: We’ll focus the rest of this article on our Cloud Link Checker. For more information on using the old (Local) BLC plugin, visit the plugin download page on WordPress.org.
Why Two Different Link Checking Engines?
The old Broken Link Checker plugin (we now call this version Local Link Checker) is a great tool currently used and loved by thousands of WordPress users to keep their URLs healthy.
If you love it, feel free to keep using it. Keep in mind, however, that it depends on your site’s resources to run scans, which can be affected by your hosting plan’s available resources, and, depending on what plugins are installed on your site, could cause conflicts or WP/PHP errors.
Our latest innovation — a cloud-based plugin — takes things to a whole new level and opens the door to an entirely new scope of possibilities that we couldn’t achieve before by integrating the best of the Local BLC plugin with cloud capabilities directly into The Hub (our all-in-one WordPress platform), all at no additional cost to users.
For example, some of the benefits of the new cloud-based BLC include:
Scalability: Cloud Link Checker runs on WPMU DEV’s engines not the individual site where the plugin is installed, so you can run broken link scans on sites of any size and server type.
Blazing Fast Scans: Being cloud-based means any dependencies on the performance of your server are eliminated, giving your scans a massive speed increase.
No Risk of Blocklisting: Pinging external sites repeatedly from your website raises suspicious flags with internet service providers and puts your site at risk of being blocklisted. Cloud BLC doesn’t use your site’s IP address, so there’s no risk of your site(s) being blocklisted.
Faster Updates and Instant Improvements: No more waiting for plugin version releases or worrying whether you site’s resources can handle the changes. We test, fix, and improve everything on the cloud and your site benefits instantly as soon as we deploy the changes and improvements to our engine..
Eliminate WordPress and PHP Errors: Our cloud-based link checker doesn’t run on your site’s resources, so you won’t experience site resource errors using the plugin.
Crawl Everything: Cloud Link Checker follows the same logic as search engine crawlers, so no URLs are missed on all standard pages and posts, menus, category pages, etc. Even better, use scheduled reports to discover broken links before the search engines see them.
WPMU DEV’s Cloud-based Link Checker provides better performance and faster speed.
Cloud BLC scans your site from top to bottom, monitoring external and internal links in your posts, pages, comments, blogroll – even custom fields.
It detects links that don’t work, as well as missing images and redirects. It will then notify you via the Broken Link Checker section of the Hub, or you can view a summary of the results in the plugin dashboard of your WordPress site.
“Love this new tool, especially since it runs off-site and doesn’t hog server resources.” Levi, WPMU DEV Member
Set Up
Whether you’re an existing Broken Link Checker plugin user or new to the tool, setup is a breeze.
You can set up the plugin from the WordPress dashboard plugin and from WPMU DEV’s Hub.
Let’s look at both methods.
From the WordPress Dashboard
Cloud Link Checker activation in the WordPress dashboard.
Install and activate the plugin.
Go to the Link Checker menu and select Cloud.
If you’re logged into WPMU DEV, click ‘Enable Cloud Engine’ (otherwise, the button will say ‘Connect to WPMU DEV’), and you’ll be taken through The Free Hub onboarding process, as well as the broken links checking tool component. This will lead you directly to the BLC service tab in The Free Hub.
From here, run a new scan. You’ll get a notification once the scan completes, so feel free to look around The Free Hub while you wait.
Once you receive notification that the scan is complete, you can view the results in the Broken Link Checker section of The Free Hub.
From The Hub
Broken Link Checker activation in The Hub.
After logging into The Hub, you’ll see Broken Link Checker listed as a new service in the menu (top & sidebar).
Activate this to install the plugin on the site.
Run a scan to see your results.
However you choose to install the Cloud Link Checker, the WordPress dashboard will display the Summary Report, while The Hub will have the Full Report – including the list of broken and dead links.
Scan results in the WordPress dashboard.
Click View Full Report to see the full scan report in The Hub.
The Hub displays a detailed list of your broken URLs after scanning.
Aside from locating your broken links, missing images, and redirects, the plugin has additional functions that let you schedule scans, send reports by email, search (with built-in filters), and export your lists for download.
Edit/Unlink Broken Links
Our members spoke…and we listened!
One of the most requested features for this tool was the ability to edit and unlink broken links.
We’re thrilled to announce that in addition to ignoring and reporting links as not broken, you can now also easily edit and unlink broken links from The Hub.
Simply click on the vertical ellipsis (3 dots) to the right of any link listed in the Hub’s scan report and select one of the available options.
Edit, Unlink, Ignore, or Report links as Not Broken.
Select Edit Link to point the link to a new URL, Unlink to remove the link and change it to plain text, or select one of the other options to ignore the link or to report false positives (note: we use Not Broken reports to improve BLC’s engine).
Note: New scans are temporarily disabled while the system is performing editing or unlinking operations. You can run a new scan after these processes have completed.
Also, to keep reports manageable, if the scan detects multiple instances of the same broken link URL, the report only displays the first 10 instances and notifies you how many other instances there are.
Scan reports are kept manageable by displaying only the first 10 URLs for the same broken link.
You can choose to edit or unlink only the first 10 visible links, or perform the operation on all instances of that same link.
Edit (or unlink) only the first 10 links or all links.
Note that the tool does not scan hardcoded links written in php files (eg template files, shortcodes, etc.).
Run Manual Scans
You can run a manual scan any time, in both the WordPress dashboard and The Hub. Just hit the blue Run Scan button. This can be helpful if you’ve done some clean up, and want to refresh your view of the list.
Schedule Scans & Send Reports by Email
Scheduling scans is done from the Broken Link Checker plugin section in the WordPress dashboard.
Schedule new scans for broken link checks in your WordPress dashboard.
At least one recipient must be added to schedule reports, so that it can be sent to a party via email.
Click on the cog icon to see the menu options for scanning.
From the Schedule Scan section, click Configure.
Check that you are on the Schedule Date tab from the top menu.
Choose the Frequency, from Daily, Weekly, Monthly.
Select desired time, day, or date from the dropdown options; then click Save.
The plugin provides many options for scheduling scans.
Now we will add recipients (at least one), so the report has a destination to be sent to:
Click on the Add Recipients tab.
You can either Add Users, from the list of those you’ve already added to the site, or Add By Email, for anyone at all. Remember to Save Changes.
Adding recipients to get scan reports via email is fast and easy.
You can deactivate the scheduled scan or change the sending schedule, as well as who it goes to, at any time.
Search
To easily locate your URLs, search results can be filtered from within The Hub.
From the summary screen, you can use the dropdowns to filter by Status or Domain.
Use the built-in filters to locate items more easily in your Broken URL list.
Export Lists
You can export your broken URL lists anytime in CSV format.
To do this, simply click the Export as CSV button from the summary screen in The Hub.
And … that’s it! You’re now a BLC pro.
Keep your site’s links healthy with the best free broken link checker tool for WordPress.
“I love this! Offsetting the resources to the cloud will help so many sites!” PTaubman, WPMU DEV Member
“But I’m happy with Local BLC and I don’t run multiple sites…”
If you want to keep using the older plugin, you don’t have to switch to Cloud Link Checker. Local BLC will keep working just fine and you can easily switch to the cloud version at any time inside your WordPress admin.
You can switch between cloud and local link checker inside the WordPress admin.
Just keep in mind that you can only activate one engine at a time, so if the Cloud engine is running, Local Link Checker will be inactive and vice-versa.
Switch link checker engines inside your WordPress dashboard.
Note: if you run a multisite installation, BLC cloud version will only be available on the main site when network-activated. Due to the complexity of scanning multisite, subsites will continue to use the BLC Local version.
Cloud Link Checker – Perfect For Agencies
Being able to manage all of your sites from one place (The Hub) and send clients white labeled reports makes Cloud Link Checker the perfect solution for agencies, freelancers, and anyone running multiple WordPress sites.
Clients will love you even more when they see you’ve taken care of their broken links.
You can also use the tool with a customized report as a way to generate new clients for your agency and upsell WordPress maintenance services to existing clients.
Use BLC with whitelabel reports to generate new clients and upsell maintenance services.
Compare our plugin with other broken link checking tools and you will quickly see why WPMU DEV’s cloud-based link checker is a no-brainer.
For example, here’s one of our competitors’ offering:
Free version limitations:
Only one website allowed.
Only 200 links checked per month.
Only internal links are checked.
Links are checked once every 3 days.
Cost: $30/month (credit card required to sign up).
Whereas, with WPMU DEV’s Cloud Link Checker…
No limitations:
Unlimited number of websites.
Unlimited number of links.
Internal and External links are checked (Local and Cloud versions).
Set your own schedule (Local and Cloud versions).
Manually check all your sites anytime.
Cost: Free (priority support included for members only).
No credit card required to sign up.
To get the full picture of what our broken links checker can do, see the plugin documentation.
Now that we’ve shared the good news with you about a powerful WordPress troubleshooting tool every web developer (and user) should have in their site management toolbox, let’s take a closer look at the harm broken links can cause if left unchecked and why you need a tool like Broken Link Checker.
How Broken Links Affect SEO
High-quality, relevant, and authoritative links are crucial to a website’s SEO and reputation. Broken links can have several negative impacts on search engine optimization, including:
1. Crawling and Indexing Issues: Search engine crawlers follow links to discover and index web pages. In fact, Google cites good working links as a best practice. When a crawler encounters a broken link, it cannot access the linked page and may struggle to navigate through your website effectively. This can prevent certain pages from being indexed, making them invisible to search engines and reducing their chances of appearing in search results.
2. Increased Bounce Rates: Bounce rate measure how long users spend time on a particular web page before “bouncing” to another one. Visitors who stumble upon broken links may abandon a site altogether. When visitors repeatedly choose to leave a web page almost immediately after landing on it, this leads to a high bounce rate, which sends a “low-quality” signal to search engines about the site.
3. Decreased Search Engine Rankings: Search engines aim to deliver the best user experience by providing relevant and high-quality search results. Websites with broken links may be considered less reliable and valuable by search engines, leading to lower rankings in search results. This can result in reduced organic traffic and visibility for your website.
4. Impact on Internal Link Structure: Broken links disrupt the internal link structure of your website. Internal linking helps search engines understand the relationships between different pages and establishes a hierarchy of importance. When broken links exist within this structure, it can confuse search engines and weaken the overall SEO structure of your website.
5. Lost Backlink Opportunities: Backlinks are an important factor in SEO, as they indicate the authority and relevance of your website. If other websites link to broken pages on your site, it can negatively impact your backlink profile. Broken links may deter other webmasters from linking to your site, reducing your chances of acquiring valuable backlinks.
To mitigate the negative impact of broken links on SEO, it is crucial to regularly monitor and fix them. Conducting regular website audits, using tools to identify broken links like BLC, and implementing redirects or updating links can help improve user experience, maintain search engine rankings, and enhance the overall SEO performance of your website.
Broken Links Can Also Harm Your Business
In addition to impacting your site’s SEO, broken links can also cause serious damage to your business and its reputation. This includes:
1. Poor User Experience: Studies show that 89% of consumers will shop with a competitor after having a poor user experience on a site. Broken links create a negative user experience by leading visitors to dead-end pages or error messages. Users expect links to provide relevant information or resources, and encountering broken links can be frustrating. This can decrease user engagement, increase bounce rates, and ultimately harm your website’s reputation.
2. Negative Impact on Revenue: Broken links can sometimes cause roadblocks in your sales conversion process. Investing money and time into marketing efforts to get potential customers to your site then losing sales because they cannot reach conversion pages means wasted time and lost revenue.
3. Security Vulnerabilities: Broken links can also lead to malicious attacks on your site, phishing scams, and broken links hijacking (see below)
What is Broken Links Hijacking (BLH)?
Broken Links Hijacking (BLH) refers to the practice of exploiting expired, unlinked, or inactive external links found within a webpage.
It involves malicious actors taking advantage of resources or third-party services that are no longer available or valid, such as due to expired domains. These attackers can seize control of these links to carry out various harmful activities, including defacement through acquiring expired domains, impersonation, or even cross-site scripting.
Attack Scenario and Security Risks
Let’s imagine a scenario where a business shuts down or forgets to create a social media page but still has the link to that page on its website. In this case, an attacker can simply create an account using the same name and then proceed to post offensive content or launch phishing attacks while pretending to be the business.
Illustrative Scenario
To illustrate this further, let’s consider a website called thewebsite.com that mentions a LinkedIn page URL but hasn’t actually created the page yet. As a result, when users try to visit the LinkedIn page using the URL (e.g., https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-website/), they encounter a “404 page not found” error.
Exploiting this situation, an attacker creates a fake LinkedIn page and customizes the URL to resemble “the-website.” Consequently, when a regular user accesses the company’s LinkedIn page through the URL, they unknowingly get redirected to the attacker’s controlled LinkedIn page.
What Causes Broken Links?
There are several factors that can lead to broken links. Some of the most common causes include:
1. Typo: Mistakes made when writing the link can result in broken links. This could be a simple error in typing or copy-pasting the URL incorrectly.
2. Deleted Pages: When a page is deleted from a website, any links pointing to that page will become broken. This can happen when content is removed or when a website undergoes restructuring.
3. Renamed Pages: If URLs are changed or pages are renamed without implementing proper redirects, the old links pointing to those pages will no longer work and lead to broken links.
4. Domain Name Change: When a website changes its domain name, any links pointing to the old domain will become broken unless appropriate redirects are in place.
Best Practices to Fix Broken Links
To fix broken links, it is important to follow these best practices:
1. Check Links with a Broken Link Checker (BLC): Use a reliable tool to identify broken links on your website. This will provide you with a list of broken links that need to be addressed.
2. Prioritize High Authority Pages: Start by addressing broken links on pages with high authority or those that receive significant traffic. Fixing these links will have a greater impact on your website’s overall performance.
3. Redirect to Relevant URLs: If a page has been deleted or its URL has changed, set up proper redirects (such as 301 redirects) to automatically send visitors to the relevant new URL. This ensures a seamless user experience and avoids 404 error pages.
Steps to Avoid and Fix 404 Pages
To prevent and resolve 404 pages (page not found errors), consider the following steps:
1. Preserve and Update Content: Instead of deleting pages outright, consider updating or refreshing the content. This helps avoid unnecessary 404 pages caused by removing content that other pages have linked to.
2. Implement 301 or 302 Redirects: If a page’s content still exists but its location or URL structure has changed, use 301 or 302 redirects to redirect visitors to the new page. This ensures they can still access the desired content without encountering a 404 error.
3. Reach Out to Webmasters for Updated Links: If a 404 error occurs due to an external website incorrectly linking to your content, you can try contacting the website’s author or web administrator. Requesting an update to the erroneous link can help resolve the issue, or alternatively, suggest changing the link altogether.
Fixing Broken Links: Manual vs Automated Methods
Fixing broken links has long been considered an essential practice among SEO practitioners. Broken links should be fixed quickly.
Google understands that broken links are a natural happening. However, SEOs know that taking time to correct these issues can significantly impact the site’s performance in search engines.
For these reasons and more, it’s clearly important to keep tabs on all of your site links. A small site with minimal content can easily handle checking for broken links manually. However, the more content your site has, the more difficult it becomes to conduct manual scans of your links.
Fixing broken links manually on a website and using automated methods each have their own benefits:
Benefits of Using Manual Methods to Fix Broken Links
1. Accuracy: When fixing broken links manually, you have full control and can ensure that each link is checked and corrected accurately. This allows for a more precise and tailored approach to resolving broken links.
2. Customization: Manual fixing allows you to review each broken link individually and determine the best course of action. You can update the URL, remove the link, or find alternative resources as needed.
3. Quality control: By manually fixing broken links, you can ensure that the replacement URLs are relevant, trustworthy, and provide value to your users. It allows for a more thorough evaluation of the content being linked to.
4. User experience: Manually fixing broken links allows you to consider the user experience in the process. You can choose appropriate anchor text, update navigation menus, and ensure a seamless browsing experience for your visitors.
5. Content review: While fixing broken links manually, you can review the content surrounding the broken links. This presents an opportunity to update outdated information, improve the overall quality of the content, and enhance the SEO performance of the page.
Benefits of Using Automated Methods to Fix Broken Links
1. Time-saving: Automated tools can scan your website and identify broken links quickly, saving you time and effort compared to manually checking each link individually.
2. Efficiency: With automated methods, you can fix broken links in bulk rather than addressing them one by one. This can be especially useful for large websites with a high volume of broken links.
3. Scalability: Automated tools can handle the detection and fixing of broken links on websites of any size. They can efficiently process a large number of links, ensuring comprehensive coverage.
4. Regular monitoring: Automated methods allow for regular and scheduled scans of your website, ensuring that new broken links are promptly identified and addressed.
5. Consistency: Using automated tools ensures a consistent approach to fixing broken links across your entire website. This helps maintain a unified user experience and prevents oversight of any broken links.
The choice between using manual and automated methods depends on your specific needs, resources, and preferences. The good news is, all of the risks associated with bad links are easily avoided if you make sure they are kept in proper working order.
Even better, is using a quality, automated dead link checker tool like Broken Link Checker removes the tedious and time consuming task of manually tracking and manging your broken links.
Take Link Maintenance to the Next Level with WPMU DEV’s BLC
Over 700,000 WordPress users depend on Broken Link Checker to keep their sites free of errors and performance issues caused by outdated and non-working URLs.
Our new cloud-based plugin version offers even more incredible value — enhanced speeds, no PHP/DB errors, ability to schedule scans and send email reports (including white labeled), plus the ease of managing unlimited sites from one central Hub – all while still (and always) remaining free.
Don’t let your site’s SEO and user experience take an unnecessary hit. Especially when a practical solution is directly within your reach.
Connect, scan, schedule, and fix broken links quickly and easily and keep your sites running optimally with the new Cloud-based Link Checker. Get it for free or as a WPMU DEV member.
We’ve got some exciting news… now you can ask our new AI-powered support chat bot anything related to WPMU DEV and get answers…fast!
Our 24/7 support is now even more stellar with the launch of our newest AI star!
Before you even ask, the answer is “Yes” …
Will I still have access to 24/7 expert support from living, breathing, humans?
Yes, you will. We have no intention of replacing our excellent support team with robots. Our AI assistant is designed to enhance and complement our support offering.
Will this help me get answers faster so I can get back to my business sooner?
Yes, it will. That’s a great question and thanks for asking! Keep reading to learn how our AI assistant will help to speed up your business.
Will the AI assistant automatically grow a successful business for me?
Yes, it will not. Our CEO’s name is James Farmer, not James Cameron (you can check out our James’ Avatar here) and he likes to keep it real. So, don’t hold your breath until your face turns blue waiting for some other-worldly futuristic flight of fancy, cause we’re all about delivering real support with real people (we’re just not opposed to using the latest AI technologies and tools if it helps us serve you better).
While we are very much a “team human” company (no ifs or bots about it), our membership is growing. We offer 24/7 support to all WPMU DEV members (and your team members too as an add-on).
As we are committed to providing all members (and your clients) with the highest level of quality support, we are always looking for tools and ways to help us better help and support you and your business.
Using an AI-powered chat bot is just another tool that can help us to provide a better service.
So, the aim of introducing the AI assistant is not to replace our human support team, but to help speed up the quality and effectiveness of our support service to you.
We understand that customer support is essential to the success of any product or service. We want to assure you that our goal is to continue delivering on our commitment to deliver the best customer support available in the WordPress universe while enhancing your experience and providing faster and more efficient assistance through the addition of our AI-powered chat bot.
The AI-powered chat bot is designed to work alongside our human support team, not replace them. Our human support team is still available 24/7 to provide a personalized touch to the support experience and handle any complex issues that may arise.
How to Access AI-Powered Support 24/7
WPMU DEV’s assistant is available to WPMU DEV members via The Hub.
You can access it from any screen in The Hub by simply clicking on the Help button…
Access the AI Assistant anywhere on The Hub with just a click of the Help button.
Or select it from the Support tab…
Access the AI Assistant in The Hub’s Support tab.
Launch the AI Assistant, enter your question, and hit the Submit button. That’s all there is to using it!
Type your question into the chat field and hit Submit …it’s that simple!
You’ll get an answer in seconds…
Get answers in the blink on an AI!
And it even provides the sources of its response, so you can
Click on the Source links to view the documentation or tutorials used to generate the reply and get more information.
Now that you know how to use the tool (honestly, it’s that simple!), let’s look at why we think you should use it.
Benefits of Using WPMU DEV’s AI Assistant
With our AI assistant, you can expect immediate access to support 24/7 and a faster resolution to your issues and inquiries.
The addition of an AI-powered chat bot to our support team is aimed at allowing us to provide you with a faster and more comprehensive and efficient support experience for common questions and issues that we already have documented answers for.
This saves you time searching our documentation and frees up our human support resources to handle more complex problems and provide more personalized solutions and expert assistance when required.
Using the bot to handle questions that we have documented answers for allows our human support team to handle your more complex issues.
We are confident that this improvement will enhance your experience and enable you to not only get the most out of our products and services but more importantly, help you get back to your own business sooner whenever you need to interact with us.
The benefits of using our AI-powered help bot include:
Immediate assistance: Get immediate responses to commonly asked questions 24/7 without the need to wait or be placed in a queue.
24/7 availability: Our AI assistant is always available, as is our human support team for round the clock support any time of day or night.
Faster issue resolution: Experience less frustration as our AI assistant can quickly identify and help you resolve common issues.
Consistent responses: We are continually improving our bot to provide consistent and accurate responses to inquiries, ensuring that you receive the same high-level of support that we aim to provide to all of ourv members.
Increased efficiency: With the AI assistant handling common inquiries and issues, our human support team can focus on providing you with more complex and personalized support when needed, increasing the overall efficiency of our services and providing you with a higher quality level of support.
Self-service option: Find the tutorials and help articles you need faster and with greater ease.
Multilingual support: Our AI assistant supports multiple languages, providing you with assistance in your preferred language.
Need multilingual support? No problema!
What Can WPMU DEV’s AI Assistant Help You With?
We’ve used OpenAI’s GPT technology to train WPMU DEV’s AI assistant on all of our documentation, blogs, and tutorials.
I wanted to know what kind of questions we can ask our friendly AI help bot, so instead of bugging our busy support team for answers, I thought why not put the tool to the test and ask it directly…
Hey AI Assistant…I’ll have the bot with the lot and a side order of crisply replies!
Here’s the reply I got…
Thanks a lot, AI bot!
I then repeated this a few times and compiled the following list of areas you can expect the bot to provide reasonable answers:
WPMU DEV plugins and services
WordPress user management
WordPress updates and upgrades
WordPress troubleshooting
WordPress themes and templates
WordPress SEO
WordPress security
WordPress performance optimization
WordPress multisite
WordPress hosting
WordPress eCommerce
WordPress development
WordPress design and theming
WordPress customization
WordPress community and events
WordPress best practices
WordPress backups and restores
That’s quite a list.
Questions You Can Ask WPMU DEV’s AI Assistant
But…what about asking it “real” questions? How does the AI assistant handle these?
Well, fortunately one of our human team members (thanks, Marcel!) carefully analyzed and reviewed over 1,200 questions from real users and compiled a report listing all the correct, almost correct, and even wrong answers given by the AI assistant.
Here is just a sample of some of the actual questions the AI assistant provided quality responses for (as judged by our team of human experts). Feel free to ask the bot the above questions and check out the replies for yourself:
Is there a limit to how many images Smush Pro can compress?
Does Defender work with the hosted site WAF?
Is it possible to move non-hosted domains in and can all domains have unlimited email forwarding?
Can I use WooCommerce on a silver/bronze plan?
Can Forminator forward the form data that the customer entered to the email notification feature?
A new site showed up in My Sites that ends with .local, where did this come from?
I’m getting a Error 504 – Gateway timeout on [domain]
Can I import Gravity forms into Forminator
If I associate a client with a domain, will that client automatically be billed for it?
Can I set my own pricing for domains?
Where i can find code epp
How to change the admin email address?
How can I submit a feature request
Will I be charged to add a connected domain to Domains
I want to do specific changes to my forms I integrated via forminator.
Can I schedule cron jobs?
If I cancel my subscription, will I still have access to the pro features until the next renewal?
Enabling CDN breaks the images when we enable it for the first time. Can I push the images to CDN manually before enabling the CDN on the site to prevent image issues on the live site?
How to fix image resize report
Can I have a mix of free and paid sites?
Can I recover a deleted site?
Why is my images blurry with Smush?
What does suspend site do?
Can I connect a multi-site WordPress site network and install all the plugins on all of the site even If I only have the Basic Plan?
Does WPMU hosting have GD PHP Library installed?
Avoid Asking These Questions
You can ask the AI Assistant anything you like, but unless it’s about WPMU DEV products and services or WordPress-related, don’t expect to get a helpful reply.
The bot will spit out replies like this if fed questions it’s not trained to answer.
More importantly, the bot does not have access to your personal details or account information, so it can’t answer questions like:
“My website is down”
“Why is my site not loading XYZ?”
“What are the best templates to use for my website?”
“Why didn’t I get hero points for commenting on last week’s DOTW?”
For assistance with anything like the above, please contact the support team.
It’s The Best Bot We’ve Got (And We’ll Improve It A Lot!)
WPMU DEV’s AI Assistant still has some ways to go and some challenges to overcome but we believe you will find this tool will become increasingly useful when you need fast answers to many commonly-asked questions.
As the tool is still new and still being trained, it doesn’t always give you the answer you expect, but you can help us train it just by using it, so it will get better at serving you and all of our members.
Simply ask a question, and if you like the answer, click on the “thumbs up” (Helpful) icon below the response.
Clicking on the thumbs up icon helps us train the assistant to become more helpful.
Our AI assistant is continuously improving through machine learning algorithms. Your feedback will be taken into account in the bot’s learning process to provide more accurate and relevant responses over time and help deliver you a better experience.
If you find that the bot’s reply doesn’t answer your question or help to resolve your issue, don’t fret, don’t sweat, our helpful humans are still the best help you’ll ever get…and they’re only a click away!
If the answer you get from the bot is not helpful, click on the “thumbs down” (Not helpful) icon below the response and then click on the Contact support now link and you will be immediately put through to our support channel.
If the answer is not helpful, click the thumbs down button and the link to go straight through to our support team.
In some cases, the assistant will even recommend that you contact the support team for help.
Our thoughtful bot even encourages you to contact our support team when it thinks you may need additional help or assistance.
And of course, you can always just click right through to our support team directly…it’s always your choice!
Get Faster Answers With WPMU Dev’s 24/7 AI Bot and Live Team Support
We aim to make our support even more outstanding with our new AI assistant.
As mentioned earlier, the aim of bringing you WPMU DEV’s AI-powered assistant is not to replace our human support team, but to help speed up the quality and effectiveness of our support services. Our team is always available 24/7 to provide personal support and handle any questions or issues you experience in your WordPress business.
WPMU DEV’s AI assistant and access to our 24/7 expert support team is available to all WPMU DEV members. If you’re not a member yet, we invite you to try us today for free.
What’s so special about G2.com‘s “Best Products” awards and why should you care that WPMU DEV is a consistent G2 leader and regular award winner? Read on to find out…
WPMU DEV has earned all of these awards by delivering products of genuine value to users.
The above awards cannot be bought, bribed, or dreamed up – they must be earned by delivering users products of genuine value, as voted by the G2.com user community. No fake reviews or made-up testimonials allowed!
(On that note, feel free to visit WPMU DEV’s G2 profile page whenever you like for hundreds of authentic user reviews and testimonials about our products.)
For a software company to win a G2 award is a big deal, as the award does not come from artificially generated means, such as bots or fake reviewers.
Most importantly, however, what all these awards mean is that the company is committed to delivering a product of genuine quality and value to users.
As the G2 reports below show, WPMU DEV is committed to providing the best WordPress site management software available…
WPMU DEV is the market leader for WordPress Site Management software!
We’re also continually improving our managed WordPress hosting service and climbing up the charts…
Our managed WordPress hosting service just keeps getting better and better…we won’t stop reaching for the top!
In fact, we’re currently one of the world’s top 10 choices of web hosting providers…
We’re in the top 10 for web hosting providers.
So, if you are evaluating using a new software product or service and don’t know where to start researching or who to trust for unbiased, honest, and trustworthy reviews, G2 is a great place to start.
Who is G2?
G2 provides authentic, trustworthy software reviews from real users.
G2.com is a software review company trusted and used by more than 60 million people each year (including employees at all Fortune 500 companies) to make technology-buying decisions based on authentic peer reviews.
Here is what just some of the hundreds of real WPMU DEV user reviews look like:
“The best thing is their HOSTING, PLUGINS and SUPPORT. It’s all the best! I love the HUB. I love the reports and the automation and the plugins and the support. It really just keeps on getting better and better all the time and I already thought it was great a few years ago when I joined.” Paul C.G2 Review
And…
“Their support is second to none. They’ve helped recover several sites despite not being the actual host. The suite of plugins that they provide is really an entire solution to manage your WordPress sites. SEO, Page Speed, Security, Managing Clients, Etc… 10/10” Frank W.G2 Review
And this one too…
“I like the wide variety of plugins and services available that has been growing throughout the years. I’ve been a customer for many many years now and I’m beyond happy, especially when I need support, customer support is always fantastic and quick to help!! Completely recommend this to any webmaster/website owner.” Vanessa S. G2 Review
You can check out hundreds more reviews from genuine users on WPMU DEV’s G2 profile.
But… Anyone Can Create Fake Reviews And Testimonials, Right?
Not on G2.
While on many sites and platforms it’s relatively easy to create dozens of fake accounts and employ bots to populate these accounts with fake reviews and testimonials, G2 has a rigorous vetting process to make sure that only authentic and genuine reviews from real users get posted on the site.
In fact, as WPMU DEV’s Head of Business Development Savo Vujovic states: “G2 eliminates fake reviews and testimonials by requiring users to fill out a huge form and then using a complex manual process of reviewing and moderating each submission before these are approved for display on their site. Users have to jump through many hoops and must really want to post a review or testimonial about a company, especially as many are doing this without receiving incentives or commissions.”
For example, according to G2’s criteria, you can see that the review shown below comes from:
Validated Reviewer – This reviewer is real and was validated through LinkedIn.
Verified Current User – The reviewer uploaded a screenshot or submitted the review in-app verifying them as a current user.
Review Source: Organic – The review was written entirely without invitation or incentive from G2, a seller, or an affiliate.
In addition to organic (i.e. unsolicited) reviews, G2 does send out invitations (either from G2 or on behalf of the organization) to encourage genuine users to leave reviews, and it allows reviews to be incentivized by offering users something like a gift card as thanks for completing the review.
This user was invited to leave a review and sent a gift card as a ‘thank you’ after G2 approved the review. Source: G2.com
Looking at the review activity, you can see that out of a total of 470+ reviews submitted by users, over one-third of all WPMU DEV’s reviews were submitted by users without invitation, solicitation, or incentives to encourage these submissions.
Over one-third of reviews are organic and come from satisfied users who want to provide feedback and testimonials about their experience of using WPMU DEV’s products.
G2’s Review Sources
To help you understand where user reviews published on G2 come from, here are their review sources explained:
Organic: These reviews are generated without invitation from G2 or the organization.
G2 invite: These reviews are submitted via a G2 landing page as a result of an invitation from G2.
G2 invite on behalf of seller: These reviews are submitted as part of incentivized G2 review campaigns on the organization’s behalf.
Seller invite: These reviews are incentivized by the organization.
In-app: These reviews are generated via G2 integration options (e.g. Delighted, Medallia, and Pendo), as well as G2 in-app review prompts.
G2 Gives program: These reviews are submitted as part of the incentivized G2 Gives program.
G2 Reviews Give You The Good AND The Not So Good
What makes an unbiased review is being able to read what users love the most about the product… and any areas they feel the company is falling short of delivering on value, quality, or service.
G2’s review process encourages users to share anything they dislike…
Users are encouraged to share what they like and dislike about products. Source: G2.com
So, Where Does WPMU DEV Sit Amongst All This?
G2’s complex approval process not only results in authentic, credible, and trustworthy product and company reviews and testimonials, but they also employ an advanced methodology and sophisticated software algorithms to collate, analyze, compute, and produce “best of” awards every quarter to companies based on criteria such as usability, ease of implementation, user adoption, user satisfaction, market presence, and more.
WPMU DEV has earned G2 awards in the following product categories:
WordPress Site Management
Managed Hosting
Web Hosting
And here’s what the awards mean (and how G2 awards them):
Leader: Products in the Leader quadrant in the Grid Report are rated highly by G2 users and have substantial Satisfaction and Market Presence scores.
Leader Small-Business: Products in the Leader quadrant in the Small-Business Grid Report are rated highly by G2 users and have substantial Satisfaction and Market Presence scores.
High Performer Mid-Market: Products in the High Performer quadrant in the Mid-Market Grid Report have high customer Satisfaction scores and low Market Presence scores compared to the rest of the category.
Best Results: The Best Results product in the Results Index earned the highest overall Results rating in its category.
Best Results Small-Business: The Best Results product in the Results Index earned the highest overall Results rating in its category.
Best Relationship: The Best Relationship product in the Relationship Index earned the highest Relationship rating in its category.
Best Relationship Mid-Market: The Best Relationship product in the Relationship Index earned the highest Relationship rating in its category.
Best Relationship Small-Business: The Best Relationship product in the Relationship Index earned the highest Relationship rating in its category.
Best Usability: The Best Usability product in the Usability Index earned the highest Usability rating in its category.
Best Usability Small-Business: The Best Usability product in the Usability Index earned the highest Usability rating in its category.
Most Implementable: The Most Implementable product in the Implementation Index earned the highest Implementation rating in its category.
Most Implementable Small-Business: The Most Implementable product in the Implementation Index earned the highest Implementation rating in its category.
Additional awards:
Users Love Us – The Users Love Us badge is earned after collecting 20 reviews with an average rating of 4.0 stars.
G2 Awards are calculated based on where companies are positioned in a G2 Market Report.
For example, here is a screenshot of a G2 market index report for Managed Hosting, showing WPMU DEV as a leading hosting provider of managed hosting for small businesses:
When it comes to managed hosting we’re consistently up there with the best!
Best Relationship – WordPress Site Management, Managed Hosting, Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market), WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Managed Hosting (Small Business)
Best Results – WordPress Site Management, Webhosting (Mid-Market), WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
Best Support – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Best Usability – WordPress Site Management, Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market), WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
Best Est. ROI – Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Best Meets Requirements – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
High Performer – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Highest User Adoption – Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Most Implementable – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Easiest To Use – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Users Most Likely To Recommend – Webhosting (Mid-Market)
WPMU DEV G2 2022 Fall Quarter Awards
Here is the list of awards WPMU DEV received for the 2022 Fall quarter:
Leader – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Managed Hosting, Managed Hosting (Small Business), Web Hosting, Web Hosting (Small Business)
High Performer – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Web Hosting (Mid-Market)
Best Results – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
Best Usability – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
Most Implementable – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
Best Relationship – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Managed Hosting, Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Managed Hosting (Small Business)
Why G2 Should Matter to You
In a world where so much can be faked and skewed, companies that provide unbiased, honest, and trustworthy reviews like G2 can be a product user’s best friend.
So, if you are considering purchasing any software or technology solution, check out what real users are saying on G2 before you buy. It could save you a ton of money and hassle later and help to prevent buyer’s remorse.
And if you do decide to give WPMU DEV a try, make sure to leave your honest review 😉
What’s so special about G2.com‘s “Best Products” awards and why should you care that WPMU DEV is a consistent G2 leader and regular award winner? Read on to find out…
WPMU DEV has earned all of these awards by delivering products of genuine value to users.
The above awards cannot be bought, bribed, or dreamed up – they must be earned by delivering users products of genuine value, as voted by the G2.com user community. No fake reviews or made-up testimonials allowed!
(On that note, feel free to visit WPMU DEV’s G2 profile page whenever you like for hundreds of authentic user reviews and testimonials about our products.)
For a software company to win a G2 award is a big deal, as the award does not come from artificially generated means, such as bots or fake reviewers.
Most importantly, however, what all these awards mean is that the company is committed to delivering a product of genuine quality and value to users.
As the G2 reports below show, WPMU DEV is committed to providing the best WordPress site management software available…
WPMU DEV is the market leader for WordPress Site Management software!
We’re also continually improving our managed WordPress hosting service and climbing up the charts…
Our managed WordPress hosting service just keeps getting better and better…we won’t stop reaching for the top!
In fact, we’re currently one of the world’s top 10 choices of web hosting providers…
We’re in the top 10 for web hosting providers.
So, if you are evaluating using a new software product or service and don’t know where to start researching or who to trust for unbiased, honest, and trustworthy reviews, G2 is a great place to start.
Who is G2?
G2 provides authentic, trustworthy software reviews from real users.
G2.com is a software review company trusted and used by more than 60 million people each year (including employees at all Fortune 500 companies) to make technology-buying decisions based on authentic peer reviews.
Here is what just some of the hundreds of real WPMU DEV user reviews look like:
“The best thing is their HOSTING, PLUGINS and SUPPORT. It’s all the best! I love the HUB. I love the reports and the automation and the plugins and the support. It really just keeps on getting better and better all the time and I already thought it was great a few years ago when I joined.” Paul C.G2 Review
And…
“Their support is second to none. They’ve helped recover several sites despite not being the actual host. The suite of plugins that they provide is really an entire solution to manage your WordPress sites. SEO, Page Speed, Security, Managing Clients, Etc… 10/10” Frank W.G2 Review
And this one too…
“I like the wide variety of plugins and services available that has been growing throughout the years. I’ve been a customer for many many years now and I’m beyond happy, especially when I need support, customer support is always fantastic and quick to help!! Completely recommend this to any webmaster/website owner.” Vanessa S. G2 Review
You can check out hundreds more reviews from genuine users on WPMU DEV’s G2 profile.
But… Anyone Can Create Fake Reviews And Testimonials, Right?
Not on G2.
While on many sites and platforms it’s relatively easy to create dozens of fake accounts and employ bots to populate these accounts with fake reviews and testimonials, G2 has a rigorous vetting process to make sure that only authentic and genuine reviews from real users get posted on the site.
In fact, as WPMU DEV’s Chief Business Officer Savo Vujovic states: “G2 eliminates fake reviews and testimonials by requiring users to fill out a huge form and then using a complex manual process of reviewing and moderating each submission before these are approved for display on their site. Users have to jump through many hoops and must really want to post a review or testimonial about a company, especially as many are doing this without receiving incentives or commissions.”
For example, according to G2’s criteria, you can see that the review shown below comes from:
Validated Reviewer – This reviewer is real and was validated through LinkedIn.
Verified Current User – The reviewer uploaded a screenshot or submitted the review in-app verifying them as a current user.
Review Source: Organic – The review was written entirely without invitation or incentive from G2, a seller, or an affiliate.
In addition to organic (i.e. unsolicited) reviews, G2 does send out invitations (either from G2 or on behalf of the organization) to encourage genuine users to leave reviews, and it allows reviews to be incentivized by offering users something like a gift card as thanks for completing the review.
This user was invited to leave a review and sent a gift card as a ‘thank you’ after G2 approved the review. Source: G2.com
Looking at the review activity, you can see that out of a total of 470+ reviews submitted by users, over one-third of all WPMU DEV’s reviews were submitted by users without invitation, solicitation, or incentives to encourage these submissions.
Over one-third of reviews are organic and come from satisfied users who want to provide feedback and testimonials about their experience of using WPMU DEV’s products.
G2’s Review Sources
To help you understand where user reviews published on G2 come from, here are their review sources explained:
Organic: These reviews are generated without invitation from G2 or the organization.
G2 invite: These reviews are submitted via a G2 landing page as a result of an invitation from G2.
G2 invite on behalf of seller: These reviews are submitted as part of incentivized G2 review campaigns on the organization’s behalf.
Seller invite: These reviews are incentivized by the organization.
In-app: These reviews are generated via G2 integration options (e.g. Delighted, Medallia, and Pendo), as well as G2 in-app review prompts.
G2 Gives program: These reviews are submitted as part of the incentivized G2 Gives program.
G2 Reviews Give You The Good AND The Not So Good
What makes an unbiased review is being able to read what users love the most about the product… and any areas they feel the company is falling short of delivering on value, quality, or service.
G2’s review process encourages users to share anything they dislike…
Users are encouraged to share what they like and dislike about products. Source: G2.com
So, Where Does WPMU DEV Sit Amongst All This?
G2’s complex approval process not only results in authentic, credible, and trustworthy product and company reviews and testimonials, but they also employ an advanced methodology and sophisticated software algorithms to collate, analyze, compute, and produce “best of” awards every quarter to companies based on criteria such as usability, ease of implementation, user adoption, user satisfaction, market presence, and more.
WPMU DEV has earned G2 awards in the following product categories:
WordPress Site Management
Managed Hosting
Web Hosting
And here’s what the awards mean (and how G2 awards them):
Leader: Products in the Leader quadrant in the Grid Report are rated highly by G2 users and have substantial Satisfaction and Market Presence scores.
Leader Small-Business: Products in the Leader quadrant in the Small-Business Grid Report are rated highly by G2 users and have substantial Satisfaction and Market Presence scores.
High Performer Mid-Market: Products in the High Performer quadrant in the Mid-Market Grid Report have high customer Satisfaction scores and low Market Presence scores compared to the rest of the category.
Best Results: The Best Results product in the Results Index earned the highest overall Results rating in its category.
Best Results Small-Business: The Best Results product in the Results Index earned the highest overall Results rating in its category.
Best Relationship: The Best Relationship product in the Relationship Index earned the highest Relationship rating in its category.
Best Relationship Mid-Market: The Best Relationship product in the Relationship Index earned the highest Relationship rating in its category.
Best Relationship Small-Business: The Best Relationship product in the Relationship Index earned the highest Relationship rating in its category.
Best Usability: The Best Usability product in the Usability Index earned the highest Usability rating in its category.
Best Usability Small-Business: The Best Usability product in the Usability Index earned the highest Usability rating in its category.
Most Implementable: The Most Implementable product in the Implementation Index earned the highest Implementation rating in its category.
Most Implementable Small-Business: The Most Implementable product in the Implementation Index earned the highest Implementation rating in its category.
Additional awards:
Users Love Us – The Users Love Us badge is earned after collecting 20 reviews with an average rating of 4.0 stars.
G2 Awards are calculated based on where companies are positioned in a G2 Market Report.
For example, here is a screenshot of a G2 market index report for Managed Hosting, showing WPMU DEV as a leading hosting provider of managed hosting for small businesses:
When it comes to managed hosting we’re consistently up there with the best!
Best Relationship – WordPress Site Management, Managed Hosting, Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market), WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Managed Hosting (Small Business)
Best Results – WordPress Site Management, Webhosting (Mid-Market), WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
Best Support – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Best Usability – WordPress Site Management, Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market), WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
Best Est. ROI – Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Best Meets Requirements – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
High Performer – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Highest User Adoption – Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Most Implementable – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Easiest To Use – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Webhosting (Mid-Market)
Users Most Likely To Recommend – Webhosting (Mid-Market)
WPMU DEV G2 2022 Fall Quarter Awards
Here is the list of awards WPMU DEV received for the 2022 Fall quarter:
Leader – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Managed Hosting, Managed Hosting (Small Business), Web Hosting, Web Hosting (Small Business)
High Performer – Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Web Hosting (Mid-Market)
Best Results – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
Best Usability – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
Most Implementable – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business)
Best Relationship – WordPress Site Management, WordPress Site Management (Small Business), Managed Hosting, Managed Hosting (Mid-Market), Managed Hosting (Small Business)
Why G2 Should Matter to You
In a world where so much can be faked and skewed, companies that provide unbiased, honest, and trustworthy reviews like G2 can be a product user’s best friend.
So, if you are considering purchasing any software or technology solution, check out what real users are saying on G2 before you buy. It could save you a ton of money and hassle later and help to prevent buyer’s remorse.
And if you do decide to give WPMU DEV a try, make sure to leave your honest review 😉
Defender Pro has just stepped up its security game by teaming with Patchstack – a powerful security tool that automates WordPress security on every one of your sites.
Defender Pro just started using Patchstack to get information about vulnerabilities in the WP core, plugins, and themes – ensuring solid protection for all your WordPress sites.
Having Patchstack with Defender Pro is for prevention when a new security threat is present on your WordPress site. Whether it be the WordPress core, plugins, or themes, Patchstack monitors them within Defender’s system!
Patchstack and Defender Pro team up together to pack a punch on WordPress security.
This is a quick overview of what’s involved now that Defender has Patchstack onboard.
Patchstack is focused on making open-source software safer, including WordPress. They actively research and report thousands of vulnerabilities discovered in WordPress plugins, core, and themes.
Their developers are notified when a vulnerability is located and issue a security update – where it’s promptly handled.
3rd party plugins can lead to security issues if not monitored. Source: Patchstack
Zero-day virtual patches are created and automatically applied to vulnerable websites connected to Patchstack (and Defender Pro).
For another perspective on how Patchstack works, check out this quick video:
So – how is Patchstack implemented with Defender Pro?
Implementing Patchstack
We’ll make this easy – there’s nothing to do! It’s already implemented and ready to go.
As a user, you won’t notice any differences, and there’s nothing that you need to set up to implement Patchstack except make sure Defender Pro is up-to-date. It’s all taken care of with Patchstack’s and WPMU DEV’s team of developers.
How Patchstack Works with Defender Pro
As mentioned, Defender Pro uses Patchstack to get information about vulnerabilities in WordPress core, plugins, and themes.
Since Patchstack is built-in to Defender Pro, again you won’t notice anything on your end. Patchstack works by finding known vulnerabilities – which is done with automated or manual scans in Defender.
Defender running a scan – tracking any vulnerabilities.
Once a scan is run, any known vulnerabilities will appear on Defender’s dashboard. Or, if you have notifications set up, you’ll receive an email.
In this example, one vulnerability was found.
Click on the issue and get it resolved immediately. You’ll see exactly what the threat is and what is needed to fix it.
In this example, an update is needed for Astra Pro Addon from Astra Pro theme.
That’s Patchstack in a nutshell: finding vulnerabilities before they become an issue. And as you can see, it’s all tied in with Defender Pro on one platform.
For further information about running security scans and more, be sure to check out our article on getting the most out of Defender.
Defender Pro Doesn’t Slack When Combined with Patchstack
With the exciting new inclusion of Patchstack, there’s no slacking with security! Defender Pro has you covered – everything from monitoring security details from The Hub, blocklist, two-factor authentication, malware detection – and much more.
If you don’t have Defender Pro, start a free trial today. It easily handles your automated WordPress security, includes 24/7/365 support, and even a full WAF integration.
Also, if you’re a plugin developer, join PatchStack’s mVDP program that makes it easier to report, manage, and address vulnerabilities in your software. Lastly, if you’re a security researcher, join Patchstack Alliance to report vulnerabilities and earn rewards.
Patchstack with Defender means nothing can stack up to your WordPress security.
Defender Pro has just stepped up its security game by teaming with Patchstack – a powerful security tool that automates WordPress security on every one of your sites.
Defender Pro just started using Patchstack to get information about vulnerabilities in the WP core, plugins, and themes – ensuring solid protection for all your WordPress sites.
Having Patchstack with Defender Pro is for prevention when a new security threat is present on your WordPress site. Whether it be the WordPress core, plugins, or themes, Patchstack monitors them within Defender’s system!
Patchstack and Defender Pro team up together to pack a punch on WordPress security.
This is a quick overview of what’s involved now that Defender has Patchstack onboard.
Patchstack is focused on making open-source software safer, including WordPress. They actively research and report thousands of vulnerabilities discovered in WordPress plugins, core, and themes.
Their developers are notified when a vulnerability is located and issue a security update – where it’s promptly handled.
3rd party plugins can lead to security issues if not monitored. Source: Patchstack
Zero-day virtual patches are created and automatically applied to vulnerable websites connected to Patchstack (and Defender Pro).
For another perspective on how Patchstack works, check out this quick video:
So – how is Patchstack implemented with Defender Pro?
Implementing Patchstack
We’ll make this easy – there’s nothing to do! It’s already implemented and ready to go.
As a user, you won’t notice any differences, and there’s nothing that you need to set up to implement Patchstack except make sure Defender Pro is up-to-date. It’s all taken care of with Patchstack’s and WPMU DEV’s team of developers.
How Patchstack Works with Defender Pro
As mentioned, Defender Pro uses Patchstack to get information about vulnerabilities in WordPress core, plugins, and themes.
Since Patchstack is built-in to Defender Pro, again you won’t notice anything on your end. Patchstack works by finding known vulnerabilities – which is done with automated or manual scans in Defender.
Defender running a scan – tracking any vulnerabilities.
Once a scan is run, any known vulnerabilities will appear on Defender’s dashboard. Or, if you have notifications set up, you’ll receive an email.
In this example, one vulnerability was found.
Click on the issue and get it resolved immediately. You’ll see exactly what the threat is and what is needed to fix it.
In this example, an update is needed for Astra Pro Addon from Astra Pro theme.
That’s Patchstack in a nutshell: finding vulnerabilities before they become an issue. And as you can see, it’s all tied in with Defender Pro on one platform.
For further information about running security scans and more, be sure to check out our article on getting the most out of Defender.
Defender Pro Doesn’t Slack When Combined with Patchstack
With the exciting new inclusion of Patchstack, there’s no slacking with security! Defender Pro has you covered – everything from monitoring security details from The Hub, blocklist, two-factor authentication, malware detection – and much more.
If you don’t have Defender Pro, start a free trial today. It easily handles your automated WordPress security, includes 24/7/365 support, and even a full WAF integration.
Also, if you’re a plugin developer, join PatchStack’s mVDP program that makes it easier to report, manage, and address vulnerabilities in your software. Lastly, if you’re a security researcher, join Patchstack Alliance to report vulnerabilities and earn rewards.
Patchstack with Defender means nothing can stack up to your WordPress security.
The ability to access custom services such as development, design, or marketing is a common request we get, both from our members and audience at large – or should we say, it was a common request.
We’re excited to reveal that not only did we hear you, we did something about it. And today we can announce that solution (of which we’re rather proud).
Introducing… WPMU DEV’s comprehensive new agency directory that allows members to showcase their services, and helps users find trusted experts to hire for their projects.
It’s a win-win!
What’s more, you don’t need to wait for our team to build it. The directory has just launched! And it’s completely free!
As with any new feature, it’s important to understand the ins and outs, so let’s take a closer look at some of the details – both for those who need help, and those who can give it.
For those looking to enlist help for a project, it’s as easy as heading to the WPMU DEV Agency Partners page and searching for what you need, within the parameters you set.
For Agency Partners, we’ll be sending potential clients in their direction by referring requests we receive that are outside of the scope of WPMU DEV support.
That means FREE promotion! And potential revenue!!
Because we’ll also mention this occasionally in our weekly emails and our social media, that’s a whole lot of free marketing that will be going out to our extended audience.
Plus, by virtue of agencies being added to the directory, they’ll get high authority backlinks to their site, helping to increase their domain authority – which of course leads to higher ranking on search engines for another stellar bonus: SEO gains.
As for the directory itself, search and filtering capabilities allow users to quickly zero in on agencies that provide website maintenance, ecommerce, video production, and more.
It’s easy to use, and has loads of potential.
How to Apply
Agencies using WPMU DEV tools to build quality sites are eligible for inclusion in our Agency Partners Directory.
Such agencies that are interested in being listed in our directory can fill out this form. Every submission will be checked and agencies informed whether or not they qualify for inclusion.
While inclusion in the directory is limited to WPMU DEV members, use of the directory as a resource to access custom services is open to everyone – and it’s 100% free! Simply jump online and start your search.
Giddy Up, Partner
The Agency Partners Directory is our solution to providing those in need of custom services with quality, credible options – vetted by us – while bringing potential business to our top member agencies.
This will help users, WPMU DEV members and non-members alike, find top-ranking and trustworthy agencies.
This great symbiosis is what WPMU DEV is all about, and this launch will enhance all of our existing products and services, putting the varying specialities of our developer audience in closer reach of each other.
If you haven’t already, try us out (free, for 7 days!) and see how WPMU DEV’s membership can make a big difference in your professional journey. All of our Memberships, as well as our Hosting, include a fleet of Pro Plugins, 24/7/365 five-star support, and a ton more.
Since we launched WPMU DEV hosting you’ve been asking us for integrated domain purchase and management. So today, we deliver. Wholesale pricing, 120+ extensions (many more on the way) and reseller ready.
Read on for a quick overview or, if you are a member, jump in now.
Even your most non-tech-savvy client knows how much a domain costs.
If it’s GoDaddy, SquareSpace, or Namecheap, there’s a standard pricing method of offering heavy discounts during domain registration and charging higher prices on renewals. However, nobody is going to become rich off it (unless you sell a million of them a month).
So we are providing you domains purely at cost (purchase and renewal), with no margin for us (except to cover transaction fees) so that you can provide them to your clients at whatever price you’d like to set and save a decent bit of money on your existing provider.
For example:
Get wholesale domain pricing at WPMU DEV!
Fully Integrated with WPMU DEV
With our domains, simply click “Connect to a hosted site†and your domain will be automatically configured and set up for your site.
One-click setup? Yep!
That’s all you need to do to manage your domains alongside your hosting and your site management tools.
One-click domain setup and easy automatic integration with WPMU DEV hosting.
120+ Different Extensions and Counting
If you’re after a .com, .club or a .casino… we’ve got you covered.
Right now you’ll find over 120 different extensions (or .tlds) available through our hosting.
We’ll be adding more – country specific domains are coming REALLY soon!
And of course, all domains come with free privacy by default, plus free email and a bunch of other features too if you connect them to one of our hosting plans.
Search from A to Z to find and register the perfect domain at WPMU DEV!
Next up, let’s tie these all together so you can create your own GoDaddy… coming in 2023!
Agency Only
We can only offer this kind of service at wholesale pricing by making it exclusive to our Agency plan (just as we did with Quantum hosting).
As an Agency member, you get loads of other amazing benefits (like an unlimited site license for all of our plugins, white labelling and reseller facilities, fee-free client billing and team and client management tools in The Hub… and that’s just the start!). See our documentation for more details.
